C. Recognize the Dimensions of Information Use

Introduction to Core Competency C. Recognize the social, cultural and economic dimensions of information use.

Information without a context has little value and meaning. Information is one step on the ladder that a leads to power: data→information→knowledge→wisdom→power (the power of good) and sometimes wealth. Data when organized becomes information, which when applied to a context becomes knowledge, which when made universal becomes wisdom, which when applied correctly becomes power, which may lead to wealth. I argue that this notion of a progression from data to information to knowledge to wisdom to power does not hold for all cultures but is particularly western and reductionist. Cultures with more holistic views do not base knowledge and wisdom in data and information. In these cultures knowledge does not derive from information, but is passed down directly from person to person, generation to generation, as is wisdom. Data and information are valued by people in societies that recognize the scientific method as the basis for obtaining knowledge, as do librarians in western societies. But in other societies, data or information is inconsequential, is not collected, organized, and preserved because it is not perceived of as having the potential to become anything of value.

Because America is a diverse society, we have groups of people in our country who do not necessarily value information for its own sake and who do not necessarily seek information when they need something upon which to base a knowledgeable decision. Instead, they seek the knowledge of others that relates to their own situation and use that as the basis of judgment or decision. How do libraries and librarians then address this? Because libraries are in the information and not the knowledge business, how do libraries meet the needs of patrons from cultures that do not necessarily know how to use information, do not necessarily value it or see its relevance to solving their problems and satisfying their needs? When different cultures or subgroups of people value information differently than librarians, why would they use the library? If they don't use the library, how can librarians serve them?

I do not have answers to these questions, but I do have enough cross-cultural training and experience to know that librarians cannot myopically provide services to people just like them. One way that libraries serve the needs of everyone in their community is by providing literacy instruction and services at the library. I attended the Public Library Association (PLA) Spring Symposium, San Jose, March 1-3, and spent two days in a Literacy Training @ the Library workshop hosted by California Library Association Literacy Section. I was a designated blogger at PLA and reported the Literacy workshop to the PLA Blog. Because I have a background in ESL and linguistics and used to be a teacher, I readily understood the issues being discussed.

A fundamental presupposition of libraries is a literate society. Literacy and ESL instruction has been a big issue in America for decades now. Today libraries must be concerned not only with the traditional literacies but also with multiple literacies, such as communication and technological literacy. I have researched and written about bilingual education while I studied Linguistics at San Francisco State University in the 1990s. In Bilingual Education, Language Maintenance, and Language Loss: Exploring issues surrounding bilingual education in the United States, a research paper written for Sociolinguistics, I explore the social policies and cognitive theories that inform bilingual education in America—how American society views minority languages and how these views become government policies. I analyze current government supported bilingual education programs in terms of the assimilation and integration models that they follow. I also explore hypotheses regarding the relationship between language and cognition-the correlation between academic progress of limited English proficient students and school instruction when in the students' first language.

Another way to serve the needs of your community is to go out into the community to try to find out just what kind of services and materials people really want. I spent many hours doing this in my SJPL internship. We created a New Collections Survey in three languages besides English, Spanish, Chinese, and Vietnamese, handed them out in libraries, schools, recreation and senior centers in the neighborhoods of the new branch libraries and uploaded them to the Internet. We were trying to bridge the gap between perceptions that the library is of value to the community to providing real value in the community.

Libraries have to be sensitive to the cultural needs of their communities. A case study on library services for isolated Hutterite communities in the U.S. and Canada written by a peer group in LIBR 204, Information Organizations and Management, discusses the issues surrounding delivering library services to a language and cultural minority religious group. In critiquing this paper, I was impressed by the authors' understanding, analysis and compassion, sensitivities I tried to emulate when discussing the paper's strengths and areas for improvement. I am including Critique of Libraries and Isolated Communities: Challenges of Outreach, Communication, Implementation and Culture in Community with the Hutterite Brethren as evidence of my awareness of the social and cultural dimensions of information use.

The reductionist and western notion that data or information has value results in an economic of information-the information economy-where information is not really free but has a potential, and an actual, monetary value: the market place gives information a monetary value. Although libraries, particularly public libraries, dispense information for free and are advocates of the freedom of information, that Americans have a constitutional right to the freedom of information, libraries must function within the marketplace of the information economy. This results in the conflict of the ideal and the real, "information wants to be free," (Meredith Farkas' Blog) vs. the information economy and even the knowledge economy. While Americans do have the “right to know,” they also have the “right to pay to know.” Where is the solution to this dilemma?

I have advocated for by writing about the Open Access Initiative since I started library school in 2004. Open Access moves information and knowledge out of the hands of private publishing concerns and into the hands of the masses through the medium of the Internet making it not entirely free but definitely affordable for libraries and institutions of not only the developed world but also the developing and the undeveloped worlds. I continue to follow its progress via the Open Access Newsletter written by Peter Suber, Research Professor of Philosophy, Earlham College, continue to write about open access and open archives repositories, and hope to work in an academic library to foster open access tools.